Sondra Radvanovsky’s first Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera this month comes at a time when the opera and its title role seem to have some explaining to do—or so one would glean observing the choices made by its interpreters. Luc Bondy’s 2009 production doesn’t think the opera is lurid enough to begin with, instead making it get further down and tawdry. While in an interview published in the Met program, Radvanovsky says she wants to minimize the grande dame angle and remind us of the country girl that reigning prima donna Tosca once was. Whatever back story works for you, fine, but what I saw overtly realized on stage by the soprano were entrances and exits that were at times almost pedestrian, so intent perhaps was Radvanovsky on not playing the diva.
Sondra Radvanovsky as Tosca, and Roberto Alagna as Cavaradossi in “Tosca” at the Met / Photo by Marty Sohl
Verismo opera, of which Tosca is one of the canonical examples, is a style of hyper realism; it is not naturalism. The great Toscas of old, as well as their stage directors, seemed to take to the opera more organically—creating searing theatrical experiences as a result—by accepting that Tosca herself was so mercurial that she made sense dramatically by not making sense. Tosca contains all emotions not just because all human beings potentially do, but because she’s a great performer and has to have them all readily available at her disposal. She epitomizes the protean nature of the theatrical animal and the theatrical impulse.
Radvanovsky has an unusual voice and vocal production that is not for all tastes, but it demonstrates impressive technique and artistry. Her voice seems to resonate from further back in the mouth than is customary but without any impression of a bottled or constricted timbre. She has a most pronounced, but fully controlled, vibrato: indeed, there is so much overtone that she sometimes seems to be singing 1-1/2 notes. That’s probably why there was a little blurriness in some, but not all, of her distress-call high notes in act 2. But there was also some stunning stiletto precision to her climactic cries of vengeance in Act 3.
Radvanovsky’s vocal shading gave us the pain, the passion, the romantic vulnerability of the heroine. The soprano made a selective use of parlato, the speech-like effects with which performances of the role are usually studded. “Speech,” however, is hardly an adequate word to describe the array of screams, snarls, groans, hisses that divas have often disgorged over the course of the opera’s history. None of this is healthy for the operative voice, but it is spine-tingling for the audience. Radvanovsky’s response to the competing demands of vocal longevity and idiomatic delivery was to select moments where she wanted to go for broke and, at those particular moments, to do so unstintingly.
Radvanovsky made all the indicated acting moves, which are not easy and not very “nice” at times, particularly in Bondy’s scheme. Her subjugation by Baron Scarpia, the lusty police chief who’s got her lover imprisoned, reduces her in this production to having to crawl through some of the second act. But her best acting effects were vocal, such as her just-audible-enough (therefore both realistic as well as theatrically viable) sobs at the end of act 2 as she collapses onto a couch. Bondy’s conclusion to this act overrules the stage directions of Puccini’s two librettists, Giacosa and Illica. Usually Tosca, after stabbing Scarpia, arranges a death-rites tableau around his corpse. Bondy has substituted a whole new set of actions, including a moment where Tosca post-homicide considers jumping out of the window. Here the director’s revisionism was interesting and not gratuitous.
Radvanovsky’s Cavarodossi, her painter lover, was Marcelo Άlvarez. He had cancelled the first performance due to indisposition. Here, at the second Tosca, he seemed to be negotiating gingerly around the notes. But his singing improved as the night went on. Falk Struckmann as Scarpia was wonderful. He ran out of gas at a couple of moments in act 2, but overall his sound was just loud and barbaric enough. He was a worthy adversary for Radvanovsky. Conductor Marco Armiliato heeded the Italianate sensuality that pervades the score as much as does its frenzy of pursuit, capture, deception.
This cast repeats Tosca on Jan. 21, 25 and at the Jan. 29 matinee.
